The Care and Feeding of Sales Reps
How can I grow my aftermarket
sales?
November 2009
"Our sales reps love to sell big-ticket systems, but they have zero
interest in pushing lower-priced add-ons. Since this is where we earn our
best margins, I'd love to create an incentive plan that would make this
line of business grow. Ideas?"
Mike: You have several options. One solution is simply to
increase the commission on the add-ons (and perhaps lower the percentage for
big-ticket deals). Or you could begin to pay commissions based on margins
rather than gross revenues. Either way, selling add-ons could become somewhat
more attractive to your sales reps.
However, neither of these approaches will work if your sales reps feel that
small transactions involve too much hassle and paperwork--which is often the
real problem.
You need to sit down with your sales team and discuss how you've structured
their incentive plan. You have a real balancing act here: Your reps probably
feel they're getting paid a reasonable amount of money for pushing big-ticket
sales, so they won't be happy to do more work for no extra pay.
|